ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the 2010 British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster—the most infamous event in a centuries-long story of smaller-scale environmental and social disruptions. It examines the use of Corexit dispersants in an attempt to ameliorate contamination that further polluted the environment and affected local residents' health and livelihoods. The seafood that feeds the families is no longer safe—Crystlyn Rodrigue, Grand Caillou/Dulac. Portions of the response plan were copied from material on the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website and failed to consider the applicability of the information it contained to the Gulf of Mexico context. The sociohistorical and political processes that established an energy sacrifice zone and privatized common resources perpetuate through the tenets of disaster capitalism, which have enabled corporations' ability to not only reap rewards, but to do so expeditiously. Some coastal residents and fishing families took action to counter BP's media campaign, attempting to influence what anthropologist Mark Schuller described as the "disaster narrative".
